Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your site using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish fresh content regularly to automatically start driving traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of this process. You will learn how a WordPress site should be configured to automatically start to get new traffic when you begin to post web content to your website.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. With business getting so much more competitive, it’s worth exploring every advantage available to improve your own performance online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand is a huge advantage. For businesses, having an expertly configured website means having an immediate advantage from the word “go”.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to explain the difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does it take more work to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
To illustrate this point here’s an amusing story.
Are Experts Worth The Money They Charge?
Everything is running smoothly in the gizmo-making workshop when suddenly, things comes to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert immediately goes to the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for less than 2 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer and makes a gentle tap about two and half cm from the right edge of the box.
Immediately, everything starts working once again.
The manager is grateful and relieved as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bordering on outrage, the manager picks up the phone and calls the expert. Demanding to know why the expert has charged them such a large amount of money for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work, he then requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, a bill of payment arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to consistently drive visitors to their sites.
How much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one on the business was able to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that allowed him to immediately avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social media and dozens of other online properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously simple once implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than installing a website and configuring settings for the client. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which accounts you need to set up and activate to achieve specific results
- Which settings you need to configure in order to make sure everything will function as you have imagined, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring a solution, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web server, your website, and a number of external sites and/or online services …
(The configuration phase involves more than just configuring a few settings in WordPress)
If the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified diagram of the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your business may attract will be unwelcome traffic like bot spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and bad traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include things like implementing server-level spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been fine-tuned and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites.
Integration With External Sites
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all content should be published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, radiate outwards to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After adding these external sites to your network, content with links pointing back to your website is automatically published on search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and site benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online solutions will need to be set up before configuring your site’s settings to speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress settings:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Webmasters lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of useful data, tools and diagnostic reports about your website.
Once your account with Google Search Console have been set up, you can use the account information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s traffic performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, you can add traffic monitoring code to WordPress via a simple plugin and send data instantly to various other online applications and web properties.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmaster Tools. Once your account and site data with Bing Webmaster Tools have been set up, you can use this information to automate traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts and profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up accounts with and syndicate your content to. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many new online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as second-tier traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various solutions that can be incorporated into your own traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress Site Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Global WordPress Settings
Your WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services box
By default, this section displays only one entry …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, your choice to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content displays in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Generally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically ping all the update services you have listed in the Update Services area when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although this section is mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your content, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Screen)
The examples below show some of the ways your post permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
We have created a detailed tutorial on using WP permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
WordPress – Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages more search engine friendly …
(Yoast SEO – WordPress Plugin)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your website’s search engine optimization. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how to present your content to Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can easily add social sharing to your website with WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing features to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, many themes also provide options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes include built-in traffic optimization features)
With many WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Other Features To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the elements that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for a growth in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwelcome traffic but also for all the situations that can hurt your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is compliant with all government regulations.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
We have written a detailed article on the importance of having a compliant website here:
Post Tags And Post Categories
WordPress post categories and tags help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to discuss and set up your website’s post categories and tags earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
When configuring your site to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post categories and tags that have been set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A visitor site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external tools discover more of your online content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Forget This!
When visitors enter the wrong URL or click on a link pointing to a destination on your site that no longer exists, they will typically be presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add fresh content consistently to begin attracting new web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, can be quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click on the link below:
This article is part of an article series designed to help you learn how to grow your business online with a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing methods.
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